09.23
With all this talk about the (hopefully) improving economy and consumer confidence, and employment numbers as a lagging indicator…I’d be interested in seeing a national employee morale index and the relationship between morale and a nation’s GDP. Is one predictive of the other? How tight is the correlation? And of course trying to design an objective measure of national employee morale would be the really fun part. (It looks like there have been attempts, and there’s the Consumer Sentiment Index, which sounds similar but isn’t directly related to employment. Let me know if you’re familiar with something along these lines.)
Doing so might also provide evidence that brand strategy can have a significant impact on employee morale. Not because agencies can create corny “you can do it” campaigns to get employees excited about making an extra cold call or working through lunch, but because
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09.18
I’ve had the pleasure of representing the firm I work for at a couple of conferences and networking events lately, and explaining who we are and what we do. Because I’ve been one of the few branding/marketing/communications people at these events, that’s often meant explaining what brand strategy is. As much as the average professional claims to have a grasp of brand strategy concepts, there’s still a tendency to assume all we do is come up with pretty logos and snappy taglines.
There’ll never be a lack of ways to explain branding and brand strategy (as evidenced by all the books on the topic, for example), but I do think it’s a good exercise to think about the best way to communicate its value and relevance to different audiences in different circumstances. So here’s more or less the story I’ve been telling over the past few days. I like that it’s pretty succinct (at least compared to my typical verbosity), avoids branding jargon, and gets away from specific tactics. Curious what you think about it.
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09.10
A few months back I wrote a post about a local coffee (?) joint near my house. The problem with DeSpyro Coffee, from my point of view, was that they were claiming expertise in too many categories at once (coffee, burgers, breakfast, mexican food, gelato, subs, and “grill”), which gives the impression that they’re a jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe that’s fine if you’re a diner or a Jewish deli, but for a place with “coffee” in the name, it would be nice if they’d at least mastered a good cup a’ joe.
The other day I noticed that DeSpyro is now Dukes Burgers. I called, and apparently it is just a name change, with little change to the menu or anything else. The lady I spoke with wouldn’t give me a real reason for the name change.
But here’s the kicker:
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09.03
Look! It’s unnecessary quotation mark’s ugly cousin, the unnecessary apostrophe. Usually only spotted preceding an “s,” this is a rare and exciting find.
